This invention concerns Liquid Crystal materials including polymeric and non-polymeric materials, oligomers, intermediates and methods for their preparation. It has applicability in the areas of display technology, thin film magnetic materials for use in (for example) data storage, lubricants and anisotropically supported catalysts.
In liquid crystal polymers, the monomers can be attached together in essentially two ways. The liquid crystal part, or mesogenic unit, of the polymer may be part of the polymer backbone resulting in a main chain LC polymer. Alternatively, the mesogenic unit may be attached to the polymer backbone as a pendant group i.e. extending away from the polymer backbone. This results in a side chain LC polymer.
The side chain liquid crystal polymer can generally be thought of as containing a flexible polymer with rigid segments (the mesogenic unit) attached along its length by short units which may be flexible or rigid. It is the anisotropic, rigid section of the mesogenic units that display orientational order in the liquid crystal phases. In order to affect the phases exhibited by the liquid crystal and the subsequent optical properties there are many features which can be altered: some of these features are particularly pertinent to the side chain liquid crystal polymers e.g. the flexible part (known as the spacer group) that joins the mesogenic unit to the polymer backbone.